Archive for ‘technology’

“A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter, UK, have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. Inspired by nature, the researchers identified and replicated the unique structural elements that create the bright iridescent blue color of a tropical plants fruit. The multilayered fiber, described January 28 in the journal Advanced Materials, could lend itself to the creation of smart fabrics that visibly react to heat or pressure.”Our new fiber is based on a structure we found in nature, and through clever engineering weve taken its capabilities a step further,” says lead author Mathias Kolle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences SEAS. “The plant, of course, cannot change color. By combining its structure with an elastic material, however, weve created an artificial version that passes through a full rainbow of colors as its stretched.”…..

“The DIY BioPrinter Hack Lets You Print Biomaterials From an Old Inkjetby Morgana Matus, 01/25/13filed under: biomimicry, green gadgets, green technology, Interactive ObjectsShare on TumblrEmailWith large companies such as Organovo and Autodesk teaming up to fabricate living tissue, you might think that bioprinting is out of the scope of the average DIYer. But when it comes to technology, human ingenuity is an incredible thing, and just because you don’t own an expensive piece of a equipment doesn’t mean you can join the organic 3D-printing revolution. Thanks to a modification by Instructables member Patrik, an old abandoned HP5150 inkjet printer can be transformed into a DIY bioprinter.”

Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars from Universe Architecture in Amsterdam designed a one-piece building which will be built on a 3D printer. He hopes the so-called Landscape House can be printed out latest in year 2014.“Ruijssenaars plans to print every piece in size of 6 x 9 meters using a massive 3D printer called D-Shape. Designed by Italian inventor Enrico Dini, the D-Shape is potentially capable of printing a two story building using thin layers of sand and an inorganic binder to build up its constructions. Will the result be strong enough?

Ruijssenaars says Dini has suggested to print out the form only. And this “contours” of the house will be then filled with fiber reinforced concrete to get the desired strength.

Together with a Dutch construction company, Ruijssenaars is working with Dini to realize the idea. “It will be the first 3D printed building in the world. I hope it can be opened to the public when it’s finished. “says Ruijssenaars.

The landscape house is developed for joining Europan, a European competition of ideas for young spatial designers. Europan organises this competition once every two years in fifteen countries. Taken together, on average, these countries make 50 real sites available for young designers to develop a plan.

The landscape house will be a landscape in the landscape. “It was a house in Ireland,” says Janjaap Ruijssenaars. “The location on the coast is so beautiful that we want the design to reflect the nature. Landscapes are endless and our question was whether we can design a home that has no beginning and no end.”

“Because Glass comes with a built-in display, the technology also allows users to make inputs solely using gestures, which the camera can then pick up an interpret. As a result, there are many use cases where there won’t be a need to project a keyboard at all.”

“Glass is, simply put, a computer built into the frame of a pair of glasses, and it’s the device that will make augmented reality part of our daily lives. With the half-inch (1.3 cm) display, which comes into focus when you look up and to the right, users will be able to take and share photos, video-chat, check appointments and access maps and the Web. Consumers should be able to buy Google Glass by 2014.”

However “It looks like Vuzix, a small company based in Rochester, New York, is about to beat Google to the punch in releasing Internet-enabled smart glasses that allow you do things such as scan your email, use your favorite apps, and respond to updates from sources like Facebook.

New ‘smart’ fibres could be woven into your clothes to give them special properties, such as the ability to clean themselves, or recharge your mp3 player. It’s the fist time these kinds of fibres have been designed to survive washing at high temperatures. “Until now, such multifunctional applications have been limited by the ability to spin important materials into yarns and make sure they stay there even after washing,” says Ray Baughman of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas.

To solve this problem, his team set about making a yarn that could be peppered with “guest” particles of interest – titanium dioxide to create self-cleaning fabrics, for instance – and hold onto them through a hot dunking in detergent.To find out more about this technology, you can read the full news story via the link below -from the New Scientist –

…”Scientists from Dow AgroSciences and the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have reported engineering a plant that produces compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics.

In theory, plants could be the ultimate ‘green’ factories, engineered to pump out the kinds of raw materials now obtained from petroleum-based chemicals, according to the researchers. In reality, getting plants to accumulate high levels of thee desired products has proved elusive – until now.

“We’ve engineered a new metabolic pathway in plants for producing a kind of fatty acid that could be used as a source of precursors to chemical building blocks for making plastics such as polyethylene,” said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, who led the research.”….

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

“Did you know that it’s been nearly twenty years since the first website was placed online? Have you ever thought about how the Internet and the web have evolved in time?Ponder it: the Internet, a complex series of interconnected networks, protocols, servers, cables, and computers, has evolved from its early days as U.S. Department of Defense research project into the foundation for the World Wide Web, what we use today to interact with one another via browsers, email, Twitter, Skype, and millions of other online tools.As we approach the imminent launch of the Apple Tablet and analyze new trends coming out of out of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show our full coverage, now is good time to reflect on what the web will look like in the next decade — and beyond.I have four big predictions to share for what the web will look like in the near future. This is what I expect in the evolution of our online lives:”

“Light Touch™ is an interactive projector that instantly transforms any flat surface into a touch screen. It frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, allowing users to interact with that content just as they do on their hand held devices – using multi-touch technology.”

“The 2010 edition of CES is in full effect in Las Vegas and with it all of the latest gadgets, gizmos and technologies ranging from automotive to internet and wireless. Walking the floor it was clear that green tech is definitely making its way into the mainstream consumer companies more and more. There is an entire pavilion here at CES dedicated to sustainable technologies and products, but peppered throughout the wireless world and innovation areas of the show green products and services were being demonstrated. Read on for some of the cool green tech that caught my eye on this first day of the show!”